When I was in elementary school in the public schools of New York City, I distinctly remember that it was important for me to be athletic — in particular, to be able to run fast. I was encouraged by all around me. My reward was the respect and admiration of classmates and especially my streetmates.

In junior high school it was important for me, now that I was certiﬁed the “fastest on the block,” to slam-dunk a basketball. To do this you have to jump high and palm the basketball. On April 17, 1973, I was the ﬁrst in my grade to slam-dunk a basketball. I then asked myself, “Is this all there is to it?” The answer is basically yes, yet one can imagine creative variations such as a 360-degree pirouette in midair preceding the dunk, but you still score only two points.

About the same time, I learned that light, traveling at 186,282 miles per second, moves too slowly to escape from the event horizon of a black hole. This was more astonishing to me than a 360-degree slam-dunk. I soon became scientiﬁcally curious and read everything I could ﬁnd about the universe. I began to see myself as a future scientist — in particular, an astrophysicist. It became a deeply seated dream.

I shortly came to the shattering awareness that few parts of society were prepared to accept my dreams. I wanted to do with my life what people of my skin color were not supposed to do. As an athlete, I did not violate society’s expectations since there was adequate precedent for dark-skinned competitors in the Olympics and in professional sports. To be an astrophysicist, however, became a “path of most resistance.” I began to wonder whether I originally wanted to be an athlete more from society’s interest rather than my own. My brother, Stephen, today a professional artist, could run faster and jump higher than I could. He, too, felt these forces of society.

In high school, nobody probed further about how I became captain of the wrestling team. But when I became editor-in-chief of my school’s annual Physical Science Journal, my qualiﬁcations were constantly queried. And when I was accepted to the college of my choice, I was continually asked for my SAT scores and grade point average. Indeed, one fellow student, who worked in the ofﬁce of the guidance counselor, threatened to ﬁnd the ﬁle in the school records to read my scores himself, if I didn’t tell.

When I ﬁrst entered graduate school, before transferring to Columbia, I was eager to pursue my dreams of research astrophysics. But the ﬁrst comment directed to me in the ﬁrst minute of the ﬁrst day, by a faculty member whom I had just met was, “You must join our department basketball team.” As the months and years passed, faculty and fellow students, thinking that they were doing me a favor, would suggest alternative careers for me.

“Why don’t you become a computer salesman?”

“Why don’t you teach at a community college?”

“Why don’t you leave astrophysics and academia? You can make much money in industry.”

At no time was I perceived as a future colleague, although this privilege was enjoyed by others in graduate school.

When combined with the dozens of times I have been stopped and questioned by the police for going to and from my ofﬁce after hours, and the hundreds of times I am followed by security guards in department stores, and the countless times people cross the street upon seeing me approach them on the sidewalk, I can summarize my life’s path by noting the following: in the perception of society, my athletic talents are genetic; I am a likely mugger-rapist; my academic failures are expected; and my academic successes are attributed to others.

To spend most of my life ﬁghting these attitudes levies an emotional tax that constitutes a form of intellectual emasculation. My Columbia PhD, conferred in 1991, brought the national total of black astrophysicists from six to seven, out of four thousand nationwide. Given what I experienced, I am surprised that many survived.

My Columbia PhD, conferred in 1991, brought the national total of black astrophysicists from six to seven, out of four thousand nationwide. Given what I experienced, I am surprised that many survived.

I eventually learned that you can be ridden only if your back is bent. And, of course, that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. When I had ﬁnally transferred my graduate program to Columbia University, where I was welcomed by the Department of Astronomy, I received a twice-renewed NASA research fellowship, published four research papers, attended four international conferences, had two popular-level books published, was quoted three times in The New York Times, appeared twice on network television and was appointed to a well-respected postdoctoral research position at Princeton University’s Department of Astrophysical Sciences.

There are no limits when you are surrounded by people who believe in you, or by people whose expectations are not set by the short-sighted attitudes of society, or by people who help to open doors of opportunity, not close them.

On my college application a questions asks, “What are your goals?” My response was simply, “A PhD in astrophysics,” a goal that had been planted within me from when I was nine years old. With the conferral of my Columbia PhD, I had lived and fulﬁlled my dream, yet I knew my life had just begun and that my struggle would continue.

Do not intentionally make false or misleading statements, impersonate someone else, break the law, or condone or encourage unlawful activity.

If your comments consistently or intentionally make this community a less civil and enjoyable place to be, you and your comments will be excluded from it.

We need your help with this. If you feel a post is not in line with the comment policy, please flag it so that we can take a look. Comments and questions about our policy are welcome. Please send an email to info@moyersmedia.com

This reminds me of my college roommate, a graduate student in aero-astro engineering at Stanford, reporting with rage and frustration that at a department social event, male students were introduced to visiting professors while she was introduced to a secretary who came from the same state she did.

SierraC

Neil deGrasse Tyson is fascinating in so many ways. I’ll read this memoir! Until we as a society overcome our racist failings, we risk losing the brilliance of so many. Thank you, Neil deGrasse Tyson, for persevering!

Truthspew

Yeah, I’m glad he made the struggle to reach what I consider a pretty cool position at the Hayden Planetarium. And I’m not being sarcastic, I’m also glad he’s a vociferous spokesman for science in general. And to me I couldn’t ask for much more.

Anonymous

Love this man. And it’s earie how similar this account is to my own experience as a woman pursuing a computer science degree in the 80s.

Anonymous

I am so glad you kept trying. I enjoy your shows and your very obvious love of science. I look forward to you and Cosmos’s premier. I know i will enjoy it. Keep bringing that love of science to us, you have a big fan here. Skip Moreland

Joseph O’Sullivan

It is great to follow your love of science as a career. It’s hard for anybody to do because there are more PhDs then there are jobs for PhDs. I can’t even imagine the the added pressure of racism.

I remember the stories that I heard from my friends who went to the local public high school which was in an entirely white neighborhood. There was a black student who had a container of milk poured on his head during the first lunch period only because he was black. This happened in the 1980’s, not the 1880’s.

Anonymous

It’s wonderful to explore ideas that are pure ideas – that reflect a world independent of politics and rhetoric. Yet I’m also fascinated at the idea that time is a real thing, not a fourth dimension or some toy for H.G. Wells. And it would be even more powerful to get Neil deGrasse Tyson’s opinion of Time Reborn, by Lee Smolin. Just as we know 4% of this or 16% of dark whatever, we also know that we won’t know that same amount of that same reality in some not terribly distant future. And we’ll be “right” then, just as we are now, and were way, way before when the guys talking spoke to Plato.

Relativism trumps all kinds of politics.

Barbara Blough

I am always shocked at the unthinking, careless, and ignorant or knowing behavior of some people. And educators!! Well, they weren’t educators. I can’t bring myself to call them wolves in sheep’s clothing because wolves are so much better behaved.

Ed Ruthazer

Interesting that the superior academic environment was also the most open-minded. Tells you something about successful researchers.

Eric Roseberry

A great story… I believe its more universal than black and white though. Dare to dream, be prepared to here a lot more reasons why you can’t than why you can.

Anonymous

As a 65 y/o black man I can relate 100% to everything he said. And like clock work the very FIRST comment on cue Eric Roseberry’s response was to play it off and say it wasn’t really a black-white thing. AND THERIN lies the problem. People like Eric. Pseudo Liberals who are still inveterate hard core “Liberal Racists” My hopes and dreams were constantly challenged and dismissed as just “silly dreams” from as young as I can remember. Eric it IS black and white. I was 7 the first time I was called “that word”, BY A FIVE YEAR OLD!!! Police stop me DWB and approach my car with hand on gun. Followed around in stores, stopped and searched by police. But all that was fine to a point. It got to be a game and a sort of badge of Honor to be hassled by the POlice. But what wasn’t OK was how my intelligence was dismissed and suspect. Like I was a cheater. The racists were OK. I knew where they stood, it was the Eric’s that caused the most damage. The faux Liberals. People like Eric always look for a proverbial “silver lining” like it wasn’t really bigotry, I must be thin skinned. “Oh but………” All I can say is screw losers like Eric, the most dangerous racist of all, The LIBERAL RACIST… Wait, I’m no Herman Cain, I despise him. I am a hard core Liberal Democrat. No Michael Steele here folks. No, there is that hidden liberal racist that say’s all the right things until he says something stupid like Eric. “I don’t see it as a black-white thing” SHUT UP ERIC!

Anonymous

I know about this crap because I am a female Chahta. I lived near Hayden, Id., which is a white male paradise.

Anonymous

Seems to me the word “racism” is being completely misused these days, in all kinds of ways. PARTICUARLY by our “white Liberal” friends, who spend more time trying to be “one of the good ones” than they do creating an equal standard for all.

Anonymous

Had you have been a Black male, you might have been killed by the police just for walking on the campus. I understand you struggled but you still have a position of unearned skin privilege that is stubbornly not acknowledged.

Anonymous

“Followed around in stores”… think this can be addressed with a properly implemented boycott? Why do we beg these people to take our money?

purgatoroid

There are some typos in this excerpt — for example, “a questions asks.” Someone should go over it and edit it. Also, it’s not too clear what’s being said here: “My Columbia PhD, conferred in 1991, brought the national total of black astrophysicists from six to seven, out of four thousand nationwide. Given what I experienced, I am surprised that many survived.” I’m guessing it means there were 7 black astrophysicists out of a total of four thousand astrophysicists, but it’s just not very clearly worded.

Anonymous

And shop online? Shop where?

We need to be united and start to look at each person as our (big/little/peer) brother and sister.

We need love in our hearts. Love was, is and always shall be the answer.

Drkmttr

I think Ronn was responding to how Eric’s comment seems to universalize a problem that, while universal in the sense that we all struggle, is not universal in the sense that we do not all struggle against specific regimes of racial power. It’s the impulse that leads people to remember King’s “I have a dream,” but not the “promissory note” waiting to be fulfilled. That universalizing move can come off as dismissive, particularly when the very specific mechanisms of racial oppression are well-documented. This universalizing move also tends to let us off the hook for all the microagressions Mr. Tyson noted. Instead a man struggling against an American racism that is still alive and well, we risk reducing his story to a Franklinian American Dream narrative. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but they can have very different effects on a policy level.

Odeh Audi

This is an inspiration to all. Anyone can do something they put their mind to, no matter what people say.

DF

What an inspirational and encouraging story. I am glad he shared and most of all, persevered.

Anonymous

I’d say at least three-quarters of the articles I read online now contain more than a couple typos. Didn’t seem to be this way until recently, which makes me wonder if it has anything to do with more writers composing their pieces on mobile devices…

LEK56

Wearing white all the time, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be a black man in America. Seriously… would I have made it?

KJB007

This is also what it was like to be female at the time. Much better now, but still hard sometimes.

Registered User

Great excerpt, but:

“To spend most of my life ﬁghting these attitudes levies an emotional tax that constitutes a form of intellectual emasculation.”

Dang, I really wish he hadn’t went there. For all the women struggling in the same field with many of the same issues, this is the equivalent of making the same kinds of remarks he says were made against him.

Women also struggle with earning respect in science without continually “proving” it, being treated or assumed incompetent, where your colleagues seem to get respect immediately and without question (and of course, suggestions that you should have babies instead, become a nurse or a school teacher). It’s great having your boss in a STEM field say to your face, “And it’s surprising she can handle technical details. Women aren’t usually good at that.” and similar that reinforce a self-consicous, on edge attitude about how you’re being judged based on your gender.

So, a shame that he had to refer to prejudice against him for his skin color as emasculating.

Christine Mitchell

He is speaking about his experience, not yours

Registered User

Well, duh. And he’s revealing his own unfortunate but not surprising prejudices in doing so. You gonna make that snarky remark to everyone who shares their own experiences in the comments?

Christine Mitchell

No, just yours

Registered User

I’m flattered. Have a good day at preschool.

Registered User

Or, pointing out that prejudice is universal can mobilize more people with different experiences to have empathy for one another and do something about the injustices of prejudice. Claiming exclusive rights to be offended only further solidifies divisions that cause prejudice in the first place.